Everyone's Aunt

Main menu

Post navigation

Vintage Finds #5 & #6

On this lazy Saturday, I will add a few more pictures of vintage than normal. I plan to be packing and cleaning up over at the in-laws’ tomorrow, so I’ll make this a double post.

Enjoy. 🙂

I found an old margarine tub in my MIL’s baking cupboard stash, and when I shook it, it rattled. I was intrigued. I thought it would be some piping tips. I was close. It’s what she piped with the tips. Old rose buds. Hard as rocks rose buds. She was infamous for her cakes, but especially for her piped rose buds. She offered to show anyone who showed any interest in them how it’s done. They still smelled ok, like they hadn’t gone off, but I’m sure I would have chipped every tooth in my mouth if I tried to eat one. 🙂

I’m not a big cake baker. I never got into it. I’m not much for icing and decorating. I can appreciate great craftsmanship when I see it, but I never tried my own hand at it. I’m going to assume these small colour dye jars are ancient because I don’t recall ever seeing them before. And I have been around a lot of home cake decorators in my time. Perhaps this is the stuff she used for her cake roses? Maybe.

Another jar of cake icing colour that I don’t recognize. This has to be decades old. No one makes black food colour in this kind of volume anymore. She must have bought this at a restaurant equipment or a cake making specialty store.

The last time I saw a bag of Chipits that came close to looking like this was in 1992. This bag was found in an old Tupperware container along with a few other bags just like it, and a few bags of flaked coconut that had long gone off. That vague scent of paint thinner hit me right between the eyes as I opened each bag to dump them into the recycle pail. I hate when good food goes bad. I really wanted to chow down on a fistful of these Chipits, too. :-\

My in-laws were both retired butchers, so it should come as no surprise when you open up any of the drawers in their house and find a small collection of various knives just rattling around inside it. But, for some reason, I didn’t think there would be this many in that drawer. I was a bit surprised, to be honest. Huh.

Ahh, the tackiness of the 1980s on full display in these reusable ice cubes. How did young kids back then survive seeing these plastic topless ladies? Oh, the horror! 🙂

I checked. There’s not expiration date. Do you think they will still honour it? (snort)

Holy crap. For a girl with curly hair growing up the early 1970s, this was a torture device, designed to rip out a small patch of your hair from your skull when you tried to undo your ponytails. I liked how they worked, but I hated trying to undo them myself. I always ended up crying out in pain.

I have a vivid memory of playing with a set just like this with my childhood friend in her living room. I could not have been more than ten. But to this day, I still don’t understand how the game is played. Cribbage, bridge and ukure — I was too young to get any of their rules. The packaging on this board game reminds me of the box a good pair of fabric scissors my MIL gave me came in. So, of course, they must be from the same century, right?

This is the first time in my life I have seen black molasses come in a bottle. For me, it’s always been in a carton. One that slowly leaked out over years as it sat on a top shelf ignored, waiting to be used each Christmas for making Gingerbread. Aunt Dinah seems like a relic brand, much like Aunt Jemima, no? And despite how old it has to be, that thick molasses still slowly ran out of the bottle and down into the deepest reaches of the upstairs toilet as it made its way to its final resting spot somewhere in our local waterways. 🙂

Bonus recipe from the back of that Aunt Dinah black molasses bottle. Look, it’s another type of Christmas cookie!

Original Pyrex mixing/serving bowls. Heavy, too. You know it’s the real deal when the Pyrex is heavy. I will go ahead and state these have to be from the 1970s given they sport the classic avocado colours. So famous for their influence in kitchens across North America of that era. The walls, the books, the dishes, the serving bowls, the clothes. All of it. Even my classic Betty Crocker recipe card library box set came in these colours. Stylists and tastemakers really couldn’t help themselves back then, could they? Ahh…

A lesser known brand of Dijon mustard. Note the colour. Now note the year on the lid. Yup. 1993. Never opened either.

Throwback time! Which year do you suppose this workplace button is from? (Unearthed from somewhere deeeeeep in the pile of stuff that makes up Gloria’s room.)

What i don’t realize is in reality how you’re
now not really a lot more neatly-preferred than you might be right now.
You’re very intelligent. You realize thus significantly when it comes to this topic, made me in my view believe it from so many
numerous angles. Its like women and men don’t seem to be fascinated until it is something to accomplish with Woman gaga!
Your personal stuffs excellent. All the time deal with it up!